Opteron & Athlon 64 Power dissipation
Omega65
Philadelphia, Pa
AcesHardware <a href="http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000419" target=_blank>Opteron & Athlon 64 Power dissipation</a>
<i>So where does the 89 Watt number come from? Well, I asked AMD. AMD has made - IMHO - a very good move: <b>for all "Hammer cores", motherboard/heatsink manufactures have to design for a "worst-case" CPU that dissipates up to 89 Watts</b>.There were too many Athlon boards which could not be upgraded, because the power circuitry was not designed for faster Athlons. For each faster Athlon, all heatsinks had to be tested again before AMD could recommend them.
For the new "Hammer Family" (Opteron and upcoming Athlon 64), AMD wants all boards & heatsinks to be capable of supporting even the fastest CPUs (well, if the number of pins stays the same), so that people would be tempted to upgrade their CPU more quickly.It is very questionable if the Hammer cores will ever need that kind of power (in the current process and package). The 89Watt number gives AMD a lot of headroom. </i>
<a href="http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000419" target=_blank>more here</a>
<i>So where does the 89 Watt number come from? Well, I asked AMD. AMD has made - IMHO - a very good move: <b>for all "Hammer cores", motherboard/heatsink manufactures have to design for a "worst-case" CPU that dissipates up to 89 Watts</b>.There were too many Athlon boards which could not be upgraded, because the power circuitry was not designed for faster Athlons. For each faster Athlon, all heatsinks had to be tested again before AMD could recommend them.
For the new "Hammer Family" (Opteron and upcoming Athlon 64), AMD wants all boards & heatsinks to be capable of supporting even the fastest CPUs (well, if the number of pins stays the same), so that people would be tempted to upgrade their CPU more quickly.It is very questionable if the Hammer cores will ever need that kind of power (in the current process and package). The 89Watt number gives AMD a lot of headroom. </i>
<a href="http://www.aceshardware.com/#75000419" target=_blank>more here</a>
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Comments
If 103W is the low-end for Intel, and 89W is the high-end for AMD, then that's not bad for AMD at all, being as the AMD64 chips should probably reach 2.4GHz or higher with the current 130-nanometer process.
Go AMD!